Wildly inaccurate predictions of how many fans would travel by train to the Super Bowl, infighting among state officials and a last-minute decision to ignore established plans for crowd management combined to delay the ride home for more than 20,000 fans after the Seattle Seahawks crushed the Denver Broncos at MetLife Stadium, according to a 144-page report released Friday.

In addition to problems that were widely reported at the time, including excessive heat and overcrowding at the Secaucus Junction train station before the game, the report exposes for the first time many other game-day failures, including why there was a delay in using buses to help disperse the post-game crowds and a last-minute decision by state police officials that led to a late-night crush of fans.

Through it all, however, the report — itself four-months past its scheduled delivery date — found that NJ Transit did little wrong. Instead, the Boston-based law firm of McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter repeatedly credits the agency for handling a record number of train riders safely. NJ Transit paid the firm $350,000 for the study.

“Generally, we believe the criticisms of NJ Transit’s performance are misplaced,” according to the report. “While the operation could have been more efficient, NJ Transit moved the record crowd without injury and accommodated all who chose mass transit. Nobody was turned away.”

That didn’t sit well with some lawmakers, who said the report is further evidence that NJ Transit refuses to take responsibility for what was widely viewed as an embarrassing debacle.

“Despite the report’s conclusions, one thing is clear: Either the agency was implicit in encouraging fans to use mass transit despite the alleged lack of capacity, or it was incompetent,” said Sen. Bob Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, chairman of the Legislative Oversight Committee, which held hearings in the spring to investigate the matter.

Faulty predictions

A key problem was the failure of government agencies and the private consultants they hired to accurately predict how many people would arrive at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford by train.

NJ Transit made its decisions on how to move people to the stadium based on three estimates, according to the report: One by ­AECOM, a transportation consulting company that NJ Transit paid $1.2 million for the work. Another estimate came from SP+ Gameday, a consulting company hired by the NFL. A third was performed by NJ Transit.

Of the three, AECOM’s “first pass” came closest, predicting that 32,000 people would come to the stadium by train, the report found. As AECOM performed more research, its predicted number dropped to 17,000.

Meanwhile, SP+ Gameday, working for the NFL, predicted total train ridership at only 8,572, the report said. From the earliest days of the process, there were warnings that the NFL’s estimates were wrong.

In the end, NJ Transit used their own prediction that about 12,000 would use trains. That estimate rose slightly, to 13,500, due to increased rail-ticket sales the morning of the game, according to the report. The agency’s prediction was based partly on the fact that thousands of fans bought passes to park their cars in the MetLife parking lot or to arrive at the station by bus or limousine, said Ronnie Hakim, who was named executive director of NJ Transit three weeks after the Super Bowl.

AECOM informed NJ Transit that the wide gap in estimated train ridership meant that the agency should watch ticket sales closely to guard against being overwhelmed.

There is nothing in the report to suggest that NJ Transit heeded that cautionary note. Instead, NJ Transit joined with the NFL to urge Super Bowl fans to ride trains to the game, the report said. Thousands of people who bought parking and bus passes decided to take trains instead, Hakim said. In the end, 28,301 fans arrived at the stadium and 35,264 took the train home – nearly three times as many riders as NJ Transit predicted.

People riding trains to and from the Super Bowl all had to transfer through Secaucus Junction. The first football fans began arriving at the train station at 9 a.m., nearly five hours before the first station-bound train was scheduled to depart, the report found. Those early arrivers contributed to crowded conditions, which grew acute after 11:30 a.m., according to the report.

But the crowding eased, and by 4:18 p.m. NJ Transit was taking credit for a successful inbound commute by posting on Twitter: “#TransitBowl is in motion setting record ridership to the stadium, as of 4pm #SB48GameTrain has carried 22,000 fans to @MLStadium.”

But as the championship game started, the agency’s leaders fought privately over how to get the unexpected crush of fans home, according to the report. NJ Transit had 300 buses staged at locations around the region to be deployed in case an emergency limited or shut down train service.

Officials decided that given physical constraints around the stadium, buses could only have moved up to 3,000 additional passengers an hour, too few to risk losing the agency’s last remaining safety net, the report found.

These decisions were hard-won, however. Jim Simpson, the state’s transportation commissioner at the time and a member of the NJ Transit board had argued to stage buses at the stadium. This led to a standoff with the agency’s executive director at the time, Jim Weinstein, who said “he would only deploy the buses at the Stadium if Commissioner Simpson put the order in writing and took responsibility for the consequences,” according to the report.

Instead, NJ Transit leaders decided to place buses at Secaucus Junction to help alleviate overcrowding in case the post-game rush overwhelmed the station. But at the stadium itself, NJ Transit made no changes.

It wasn’t until about an hour after the game ended that Christopher Porrino, chief counsel to Governor Christie, called Weinstein and Simpson and “strongly urged” Weinstein to send in buses. The first busload of passengers didn’t leave until 11:32 p.m., the report found, about an hour after the game ended. Weinstein resigned just weeks after the Super Bowl.

Plan was set aside

By that time, things had gotten ugly at Pavilion 6, a temporary building erected next to the train station. Crowd control was handled by S.A.F.E. Management, a private contractor hired by the NFL, the report found. The plan, developed over many months preceding the game, called for Pavilion 6 to be an “open pen,” where fans could freely walk around before boarding trains.

Soon after 9 p.m., however, “an attempt was made to line up or organize the passengers inside Pavilion 6.” The report does not say who made the attempt, other than describing S.A.F.E. Management as being in charge. Some fans did line up, while others continued to walk toward the front of the space. This led to conflict. State police officials observed fans pushing and shoving each other, and one “observed trample-like conditions and that guests were in fear of being crushed,” the report said.

That’s when the state police took control, preventing fans from entering the pavilion and repositioning corrals inside to direct foot traffic. No one was allowed to leave, even though a train was sitting in the station, empty and ready, the report found.

Watching on security cameras, officials with NJ Transit’s Emergency Operations Center “frantically called” agency officials on the ground, trying to figure out what was happening. But the agency’s officials at the stadium did not have the necessary security credentials to enter the pavilion, the report said.